Klein and team cultivate a win at the Food & Ag Case Competition

Marie Klein was part of a team that took first place in the UC Davis Food and Agriculture Business Case Competition. Klein is a doctoral student in the horticulture and agronomy grad group, working on poplar tree genetics in Gail Taylor’s lab. Participants called the experience “engaging and rewarding.”

The competition brought together teams from multiple schools to solve a business challenge for Hm.Clause, a global seed company. “My team’s journey through the competition was like cultivating a successful crop from seed to harvest,” wrote team member Danielle Kleiner-Kanter, of the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, focusing on product management and marketing. The third teammate was Min Zhu, an MBA student focusing on finance.

Kleiner-Kanter described their journey in the third annual competition, which was held in April.

The Business Challenge

At 3 p.m. on Friday, we were thrust into the heart of Hm.Clause’s real-world business challenge: reimagining its Life Sciences Innovation Center to become a more valuable asset to its business. We were armed with a 30-page dossier detailing the company’s business and competition in the global seed market.

At dinner with the fellow teams from UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and UC Riverside, faculty and competition judges, we learned more about Hm.Clause during a keynote speech from Vincent Asiago, director of research and development portfolio and innovation. A remark about the LSIC’s financial return gave us the hook we needed to frame the problem.

After dinner, we got to work on our case. We had to hand in our proposals by 7:30 a.m. the next morning!

We brainstormed the problem and the components of our solution. I built out our introduction and conclusion. Klein detailed our plan for an academic partnership between Hm.Clause and UC Davis. Zhu crunched numbers and laid out our venture capital strategy.

The competition was a challenge of collaboration, time management and mindset. These three things helped us bring our plan from idea to presentation:

1. Embrace different perspectives: Our diverse backgrounds were our greatest strength. Marie, Min, and I each brought a different perspective to the table, which helped us be more creative, and lean on each other to drill down into areas of expertise.
2. Trust yourself: Building a new business plan is an ambiguous challenge. Instead of second-guessing if what we came up with was what the judges were looking for, we focused on our unique perspective and creative solutions. This helped us be confident.

3. Enjoy the ride: Working for hours straight, we needed to find a way to stay motivated. Embracing the competition as an exciting opportunity to contribute to meaningful change in the food industry fueled our determination throughout the night. It helped us enjoy the moment and even have fun with it!

   

The fruits of our labor: Presenting to industry leaders

On Saturday morning, we presented in the first round to judges from E. & J. Gallo Winery, the March Group, Mezzetta and Hm.Clause. For the second and final round, we and two other finalist teams presented to executives from Hm.Clause.

Making it to the final round and winning first place was a happy surprise. It was rewarding to receive the judges' recognition for our team's unity and our ability to apply our education to real-world situations. That’s why we’re here in the first place!

It was a wonderful opportunity to draw on what we have learned in our academic experiences, meet and work with smart, interesting students, talk with food industry executives, and dive deep into an engaging business problem! I want to thank my teammates, UC Davis, Hm.Clause and all the judges for making this experience happen!